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U.S. Unprepared for Bioterrorism, Experts Say

By JUDITH MILLER

WASHINGTON, June 2--Representatives of the nation's public health service
told a Senate committee yesterday that the country was woefully unprepared
for a biological terrorist attack and criticized Government spending on
biological defense as misguided because so much of it goes to the Pentagon
instead of public hospitals and doctors.

Witness after witness described shortages of trained medical personnel, the
lack of high-security laboratories in which lethal, highly contagious microbes
can be tested and identified, public health clinics with rotary phones and
no computers or ready access to disease data banks.

Senator Lauch Faircloth, the North Carolina Republican who chaired the hearing,
called the testimony "frightening," a sentiment echoed by his witnesses.

"There's nothing that scares the hell out of me like this issue, Senator,"
said Michael Osterholm, Minnesota's state epidemiologist who spoke for the
American Society for Microbiology.

Dr. Osterholm criticized the $300 million recently set aside for the National
Guard to set up rapidresponse units, which he said would only play a "minor"
role in responding to an infectious outbreak. "The public health system has
not been brought into any of this," he said.

Luther L. Fincher Jr., the fire chief of Charlotte, N.C., where there was
a recent bioterrorism threat that turned out to be a false alarm, noted that
while the Department of Defense was supposed to leave S300,000 worth of equipment
in his district to help combat biological and chemical terrorism after police
officers, firefighters and other "first responders" are trained this fall,
there were no plans for further training.

Ralph D. Morris, the president of the National Association of County and
City Health Officials, listed the problems faced by the nation's 3,000 public
health officials. ~bout half of all local health departments do not have
the use of E-mail, and at least 1,000 of them have no access to any online
or Internet service. Seventy percent of the health directors said their staff
had little or no expertise in using online services and data. Twenty percent
of local health departments still use rotary phones

"They just cross their fingers that they can reach the right people by phone
or that the fax goes through," Mr. Morris said.

The witnesses agreed that a biological attack would be different from one
involving chemical, nuclear, or other weapons of mass destruction, in that
hours, perhaps days might pass before it was known that a target had been
attacked.

Donald A. Henderson, the professor at Johns Hopkins University School of
Public Health who did not testify but recently urged that smallpox vaccine
be produced and stockpiled again, said public health care facilities and
personnel were the first line of defense.

"If we are willing to spend $300 million on the National Guard, why not invest
a billion dollars in our real first line of defense, our hospitals," Mr.
Henderson said in an interview.

James M. Hughes, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases,
said that because none of the biological agents considered most likely to
be used as weapons are public health problems in the United States, "we have
limited capacity to diagnose them, either at the state, local or Federal
level."

Mr. Hughes also said that while he now had 10 to 12 people studying the plague,
no one on his staff was working on anthrax, one of the most attractive agents
for terrorists because its highly lethal spores are durable.

[Congressional Record: June 2, 1998 (Digest)]
[Page D572-D574]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr02jn98-1]
Tuesday, June 2, 1998
Daily Digest
Senate
[Excerpt]
PREPAREDNESS FOR EPIDEMICS AND BIOTERRORISM
Committee on Appropriations: Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human
Services, Education and Related Agencies concluded hearings to examine
the public health response to disease outbreaks caused by biological
and chemical terrorism, focusing on the current system of public health
surveillance and control at the State, local, and Federal levels, and
certain terrorist incidents involving biological agents, after
receiving testimony from James M. Hughes, Director, National Center for
Infectious Diseases, and Richard J. Jackson, Director, National Center
for Environmental Health, both of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and Robert F. Knouss, Director, Office of Emergency
Preparedness, all of the Department of Health and Human Services; Ralph
D. Morris, Galveston County Health Department, LaMarque, Texas, on
behalf of the National Association of County and City Health Officials;
Michael T. Osterholm, Minneapolis, Minnesota, on behalf of the American
Society for Microbiology; Edward Thompson, Association of State and
Territorial Health Officials, Washington, D.C.; and Luther J. Fincher,
Jr., Charlotte Fire Department, Charlotte, North Carolina, on behalf of
the International Association of Fire Chiefs.